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Greenways and Green Infrastructure

Noticing that the Landscape Institute (LI) has produced a draft policy statement on Green Infrastructure which does not contain the word Greenway, I did Google searches on the two terms. The results were:

This inclines me to the view that, at present, the Greenway Concept has more public visibility. There are three problems with the Green Infrastructure Concept: (1) the literature is thin (2) it is unclear whether “green” means “vegetated” or whether it is used as in “green politics” (3) the term “infrastructure” is much better understood by the built environment professions than by the general public. London has many greenways. Some are excellent and others in urgent need of better landscape planning and design.

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3 thoughts on “Greenways and Green Infrastructure”

‘The Greenway'[constructed over the Victorian era sewer line]if some of the comments on the web are to be believed, isn’t the most desirable of ‘green’ transport pathways. Are the greenways rated by the public for different aspects of their amenity?

Green infrastructure seems to be a planning definition:

“Green infrastructure is the physical environment within and between our cities, towns and villages. It is a network of multi-functional open spaces, including formal parks, gardens, woodlands, green corridors, waterways, street trees and open countryside. It comprises all environmental resources, and thus a green infrastructure approach also contributes towards sustainable resource management.” [http://www.greeninfrastructure.eu/?]

It is a respectable definition (and I did not know of it) but it rests on “green” as in “vegetated” rather than green as in as in “green politics” and thus seems likely to exclude such essentials as (1) Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) (2) municipal composting facilities (3) footpaths and cycleways – unless they also happen to be vegetated.
Also, the term ‘infrastructure’ suggests ‘substructure rather than superstructure’, because of its association with underground services. And if you think of a highly manicured urban park or garden, cared for with lashings of fertilizer, pesticide and fossil fuels, then it is not ‘green’ in the sense of ‘green politics’. Use of habitat management techniques would be much ‘greener’.
It is worthy of note that the definition comes from a website run by North East Community Forests.